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Blogging in the Age of Content Marketing 24 25 Blogging in the Age of Content Marketing Guest blogging can be an effective approach for building awareness and credibility for your brand. Start your guest blogging strategy by iden- tifying the influential blogs that your target audience reads. Most influen- tial blogs accept guest submissions and this is a fantastic way to get your content and brand to a wider audience. Incorporate guest blogging into your content strategy and submit exclusive, well- written, and strategic content to these blogs. Content on sites like this can easily yield a couple hundred social shares in a single day; make sure you strategically incorporate back links in your content body and bio, and include references to your brand if appropriate (don't do a sales pitch!). Over time, guest blogging can raise brand awareness with your target audience and positions you as a thought-leader on key industry outlets – not to mention the SEO benefits of a popular blog linking back to your site. Also consider opening your blog up to guest writers. Remember that you likely won't get much traction with guest blogging until you've in- creased your brand awareness and audience. All of this takes time and patience so don't fret if people aren't rushing to submit pieces to your blog. A s yo u c o n t i n u e yo u r c o n t e n t m a r ke t i n g s t r a t e g y a n d p o s t o n l a r g e r b l o g s , g u e s t b l o g g e r submissions will start to trickle in. For blog management to be stress-free, you need to have an organized content calendar. Uberflip's content calendar is planned for a few months ahead and we schedule our writers based on the frequency they've committed to writing. Keep in mind that your writers have different expertise, styles of writing, and themes that they cover. As a result, it's important to plan your calendar accordingly so that the authors and topics in any given week are varied and diverse. Being organized doesn't mean being rigid – in reality, your calendar rarely stays exactly as planned. Impromptu content may be written based on industry news or writers may fall short of meeting their deadlines. The important thing is to be flexible to such changes in your schedule. GUEST BLOGGING 7 Managing your Blog 1.